Is There Anything Worse Than a Senator Whining About Working During the Holidays?

With the fiscal cliff fast approaching, America’s senators returned to Washington yesterday from their holiday breaks at home, and John Boehner has reluctantly called the House into session on Sunday. Congress doesn’t normally work between Christmas and New Year’s: According to the Times, the last time the Senate held a vote this week of the year prior to yesterday “was during the second session of the 91st Congress, in 1970.” But there’s a lot at stake now, and the hope is that some kind of breakthrough agreement can be reached and voted upon in the next few days. Until the impasse is broken, however, senators are spending their time whining about how bored and unhappy they are:

“This is no way to run things,” complained Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who checked off the various backyard sports he longed to be playing with his children: football, soccer and somegolf….

Mostly, people just looked mad. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, his tie slightly askew, looked as gloomy as the clouds hovering over the Capitol dome. “I didn’t realize how much I didn’t want to be here until I got here,” said Mr. Schumer, who had taken the red eye from San Francisco, where he had arrived only days earlier to visit hisdaughter.

Hey, guess what? Nothing requires Congress to wait until the very last second (or even after the very last second) to hammer out a compromise. Nobody is forcing Congress to reach a lofty annual gridlock quota. Congress knew the cliff was coming. In fact, Congress made the cliff. If you wanted to spend some time with your kids over Christmas break, maybe that sense of urgency you’re feeling now should have surfaced a few weeks ago. Legislating is your job, and the only reason you’re in Washington instead of seeing Les Misérables with your family is because you’re terrible atit.

#BREAKING: I’m told the entire @BPDAlerts Emergency Response Team has resigned from the team, a total of 57 officers, as a show of support for the officers who are suspended without pay after shoving Martin Gugino, 75. They are still employed, but no longer on ERT. @news4buffalo

In case you were wondering about the unmarked federal agents dotting Washington

Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily armed riot police around Washington, D.C., in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or names badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

The images of such heavily armed, military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cos-playing as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied western Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).